The arrival of low-cost airlines in Asia-Pacific will accelerate moves to harmonise aviation policies across the region and drive "radical change", a senior regional transportation figure told a conference on the eve of Asian Aerospace.
And it could happen within two or three years, says Tony Wheelens, former Australian assistant secretary at the Department of Transport and Regional Services.
Wheelens, now a senior associate with the Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation, is confident that governments will see that change is essential and key reforms will take place "in a very short period of time".
He told delegates to the Asia-Pacific Low-Cost Airline symposium in Singapore: "The LCA phenomenon clearly now has the potential to become a vortex, sucking often greatly different aviation policies along the same path.
"The critical mass being generated by this process will short-circuit what would otherwise be a 10-year timetable - compressing it into perhaps two or three years."
He added that airlines, consumers and associated industries would all benefit from the adoption of a more unified approach to aviation.
Tourism
"No longer is it sufficient to equate the national interest solely with that of national airlines. Other sectors of the economy, such as tourism, airport operators and trade are, correctly, demanding a closer role in the development of national transportation strategies.
"The challenge for the negotiators is in the complexity of the regulatory environment and the difficulties implicit in making the transition from outcomes based on the sectoral interests of airlines, to those reflecting more closely the broader national interest concerns."
The symposium was also told that the emergence of the low-cost carriers was a "remarkable opportunity" for national carriers.
Peter Harbison, head of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, said that existing operators were wrong to regard the newcomers as a threat.
"It is in fact a remarkable opportunity - once they are able to emerge from the state of denial which many of them have retreated to," he said.
"The new low-cost, point-to-point thinking is already helping make complacent airlines much more efficient which, by reducing their costs and prices and improving the airlines' customer targeting, will help them stimulate traffic growth well above forecast levels.
The event was the first of three gatherings devoted to the subject. The next is at Macau on 26-27 April this year. A third will be in New Delhi at a date yet to be announced.MIKE MARTIN
Source: Flight Daily News
